Born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Steve went to the College of Wooster for his B.A. in geology, working on some Pliocene fossils from Cyprus. Steve moved on to the University of Southern California for his M.S. and Ph.D. in geological sciences, growing his hair out and living near the beach. He got a haircut and joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2004. Steve is now an Associate Professor of Geosciences there while also serving as an Adjunct Curator of Geology at the Milwaukee Public Museum. His research centers on the evolutionary paleoecology of early animals during the Ediacaran–Cambrian radiation, as well as microbial structures in siliciclastic and carbonate rocks. Most of his work is field-based, with fieldwork in the Basin and Range Province of the western U.S.A., the Lake Superior region, southwest China, and western Mongolia. Steve was an Associate Editor at PE for 8 years before becoming the Editorials Editor in 2014. His hair is still generally short but he does live near the beach again.